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When a guy’s been practicing law in New York City for over twenty years and is about to publish his first novel, you don’t look at him and think, “Hey, at Great Neck North High School on Long Island, they kept him in remedial reading through eleventh grade.” But it’s true. There I was, meeting three times a week with about five other students in a classroom with a solid wooden door and a tiny window set up high to prevent nosy kids from sneaking a peek. The only problem was that, by junior year, everybody else was tall enough to look in.

Being seen there never bothered me, though. If one of my buddies tapped on the window to catch my attention, making a stupid face, I merely held up my bag of Doritos, sipped my ice-cold Coke and pointed to the TV remote I was holding. Then, before turning back to the screen, I’d flash him a big grin.

In fact, I should have been out of there sooner. But I was in no hurry to say good-bye to those deep, comfy chairs and fully stocked vending machines, the only ones in the building. As I sat there happily munching chips, it never once occurred to me I might one day publish a novel. What a crazy idea.

But all things turn out to be connected—even if you don’t always understand right away why or how they are. From that classroom came my earliest identification with the underdog. Okay, I had great deal more confidence than the rest of the kids sitting around me—and none of their other problems—but I’d been one of them. I knew what it felt like to be on the wrong side of the door.

Justice is something you shouldn’t have to compete for . . . but it is.

After I graduated from law school and began practicing, I quickly realized it was the little guys of this world, the small fry, the ordinary joes who don’t know how to stand up for themselves, who most needed my legal expertise and fighting spirit.

So how did the colorful and cocky Tug Wyler come into being? He was undoubtedly hanging around, shadowing my daily life for a long time; I just didn’t know it. But here’s the short version: one morning, on the train into the city from Westchester—where I live with my wife, three kids, three dogs and an upstairs cat—the idea of him just appeared in my head. I don’t know from where. But there he was.

Unable to shake the spell he cast, I began to write, each morning when I got on Metro North, what’s now become Suzy’s Case. But I was doing it only to amuse myself. I sure didn’t read courtroom mysteries or legal thrillers; as far as I was concerned, I was living them.

It’s common to diss malpractice and personal injury lawyers. Ambulance chasers, they call us. Me, I see it differently. As far as I’m concerned, we’re the Robin Hoods of the profession, righting wrongs with every bit the same commitment he had to putting those culpable—most often the rich and powerful—in their place.

Just remember: anyone, in an instant, can become a victim. Even you.

The rush to cover up genuine wrongs of the sort that lie at the heart of Suzy’s Case—and the other Tug Wyler adventures I intend to write—happens continually out there in the real world. Believe me, fiction doesn’t know the half of it. What keeps me going into my office without fail each morning is my compulsion to make the system work for the injured victim when the big insurance companies vigorously resist such an outcome. It isn’t easy, but it’s what I do, and I love it.

I should add it’s no secret I enjoy joking around and have what some might even call a warped sense of humor. But though my methods may appear like smart-aleck comedy to my adversary or to the fellow in the robe with the gavel, my frequently unconventional approach is critical to helping me stay sane, dealing as I do on a daily basis with one set of catastrophic circumstances after another. One thing is certain: no one opposing me is ever able to anticipate all the angles I might spring in the course of a legal brawl.

For Tug Wyler readers, I promise the same mix: a rule-bending high-tension conflict during the course of which you’ll laugh in spite of yourself . . . while never knowing what’s going to happen next. Like me, Tug’s the kind of street-smart push-it-to-the-limit lawyer you’d want on your side when the worst has happened.